


Walking the Tightrope

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley and Pepper are BFFs, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), M/M, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining Crowley (Good Omens), and dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 04:12:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: It has been three years since the Apocalypse that wasn't. But nothing much has changed. Crowley still pops in for lunch. He still keeps an ear out in case the angel is about to do anything stupid.It's enough, Crowley tells himself. Really.





	Walking the Tightrope

**Author's Note:**

> As background – Aziraphale and Crowley kept in touch with the Them after the Apocawasn't. Aziraphale and Adam act like uncle and nephew, and somehow, Pepper has become Crowley's BFF. Because I think they'd get on like a house on fire.

_Three years after "Armageddo - wait, no, never mind"_

Pepper was rather worried about Crowley. He hadn't stopped pacing his apartment for nearly twenty minutes. He followed a certain path around the living room, which suggested this was something of a habit of his, when upset. She was surprised there weren't groove marks in the carpet. She nibbled on the shortbread she'd brought with her, because Crowley stored nothing but coffee, wine and whiskey in his kitchen.

His eyes were hidden, as usual, by his sunglasses, but the way he whipped his arms around as he strode gave him away, even as he kept his voice fairly modulated. She finished the shortbread and chewed on a fingernail instead. She hadn't meant to open such a can of worms, and although she had known it was likely to be a sensitive subject in some ways, she'd thought it would be more... funny. A 'yes, yes, we know what we look like' sort of joke. Not... anguish.

She'd only wanted to know why Crowley and Aziraphale weren't more than friends.

“...and so I can't risk it, you see. Because he's not... like that, or if he is – I don't know, things were all a bit up in the air with that Wilde fellow, I never liked the look of him – and if ever there was a writer overrated! But, but what matters is, is...”

It seemed sort of obvious they should be, just from being in their general vicinity for more than a minute. Unless they weren't into that sort of thing, but even if that was the case, there should be some sort of acknowledgement of the way they felt about each other.

“...and obviously, he's – he's great,” Crowley's voice strangled, “but he's my friend, most of the time at least, and that's enough-”

She tucked her feet up on the leather sofa. “You want more,” she interjected. Crowley rounded on her.

“You humans, you're – you're here one day gone tomorrow, you don't know what its _like._ You pop off on your merry way, and I carry on-”

“I've got a few years yet-”

“Left behind every time. Aziraphale - he's the only one who. Who doesn't leave.”

Crowley's shoulders slumped, and he stopped his pacing. Pepper found herself swaying slightly, subconsciously moderating for the lack of movement like a sea voyager thrust onto dry land.

“But he doesn't need me. He's got his books, and his intellectuals, and when it comes right down to it, the other angels too, they'd have him back if he ever wanted to go, even after-” he waved an arm, hopelessly, encompassing Pepper, the flat, the world. It's continued existence. “All of this. He doesn't need me.”

“Why have you spent 6000 years dancing around each other? If he doesn't need you?”

“Because...” Crowley dropped onto the sofa cushion next to her. “Like confessing to a mayfly,” he muttered. “Because I follow him, all right?” His voice was low, a sound that slithered round corners and made the hair on the back of your neck rise. “I don't let him leave.” It evened out again, regaining its humanity. “But I don't get too close either.”

“What do you mean, you follow him? Some kind of angel homing beacon? Angel radar?”

“You've been spending too much time with Adam.” He sighed. “But... sort of. I can... sense him. Find him when he's going to get himself in trouble. Pop in to check up on things. Or see if he wants a spot of lunch.”

Pepper nodded, slowly. Something like realisation stirred in her stomach. She wished she hadn't eaten that biscuit. “He never asks you to lunch?”

Crowley's laugh echoed, empty. “I don't think he even knows which flat I live in.”

–

“And so I got the impression that Crowley is always the one visiting Aziraphale. Is that right?”

Pepper had just finished recounting the whole story to Adam. She'd sworn him to secrecy first, and although they're too old for it, they'd linked little fingers, even if it was accompanied by a rather embarrassed eye roll. Adam had never yet broken a promise to her. So it was probably okay. As long as Crowley never found out.

Adam looked thoughtful. His memory was impeccable, at least for things he found interesting, and it ran at super speed through all the stories Aziraphale had recounted while the two of them wandered through the Natural History Museum, laughing at the fossils, or ate far too much cake on one of their tea shop outings.

“I think it is,” he confirmed. “At least, he doesn't seem to have told me any different.”

“But Aziraphale is the _angel_ ,” argued Pepper. 

Adam nodded sagely. It didn't make much sense, for the friendship to be unbalanced in such a way. But then Aziraphale and Crowley were not – from his admittedly limited sample size – usual, even when it came to celestial or demonic beings.

“Well _talk_ to him then,” Pepper moaned. “Get him to step up.”

“Me?!”

“It's not _my_ friend that's being the muppet.”

Well, Adam supposed. That was fair. And probably less harsh than it could have been.

–

Pepper shed her backpack with relief right in the doorway, glad her mum was still at work so there'd be no one yelling at her to move it for at least another hour. She rose up on her tiptoes and stretched so her fingertips just grazed the ceiling. It had been a double science day, with bonus PE and Food Tech. She was pretty sure she now had a permanent hunch. 

Her phone rang shrilly (it was the only noise which could get her out of bed in the morning, and she'd developed a Pavlovian jump response to it) and scrambled to dig it out of the front pocket. “Hello?”

“Pepper.”

Pepper pulled the phone from her ear to stare at it, although she didn't need the caller display to work out who it was. Only a true snake could manage to hiss a word with no sibilants in it. 

“Did you _sssay sssomething_ to Azzziraphale?”

“Me? No. What about?” She worried at a loose string on her jeans. 

“You _know_ what about.”

There was an awkward silence. Neither of them were really phone people. “Has something happened?”

“I have a diary full of outingsss with an angel.”

“You still keep a diary?!”

“I'm very old,” he dead-panned. “Outingss which I did not ssuggesst. No one would. Why would ssomeone ssuggesst a visit to an antique bookshop, when one livess in an antique bookshop?”

“He's inviting you ove-”

“ _Sssomeone else's_ bookshop.”

“If its in your diary, that _suggests_ you agreed to it.”

_Click._

“Very mature, Crowley,” fourteen year old Pepper chattered down the dead line. “Hanging up on people is definitely adult behaviour.”

–

_Three weeks later_

“Hey Adam!” Pepper shouted across the road. “I thought we were-” He waved frantically, and she shut up until he joined her. “Going to London,” she finished. “You know, I'm pretty sure your parents know where we go, they just don't care. They like Aziraphale and Crowley.”

“They don't know how we get there,” he hissed. She rolled her eyes. 

“They're not as stupid as you think. Your mum found all your decoy train tickets unclipped."

“I'm pretty sure my parents don't think I'm the Antichrist, Pep.”

“They know you're something.” She twisted him round by the shoulders until she could dig into his backpack and pull out the packet of lemon sherbets she'd seen Wensley secrete away the previous day. “Want one?” she offered. He took one, unwrapped it, and gave her back the plastic. It joined her own wrapper in her jeans' pocket, and she zipped him up. “Why no London?”

He span back around. “They're coming here instead. I said we'd meet them down at the river, you took so long-”

“Not my fault mum made me wash up-”

“-Brian and Wensleydale already went on ahead.”

Pepper shrugged at the change of plan. She liked the river, and honestly, travelling by the Antichrist Express usually gave her a headache anyway. They walked in silence down the familiar muddy path, skirting the edge of the wood and rounding the last bend to -

“Oh,” she said.

“Right?” Adam grinned mischievously. “It worked.”

Brian and Wensleydale were playing some kind of wrestling game – about as unfair a fight as it could be; Wensleydale was almost breathing in mud – but that wasn't what had caught her eye.

There was a picnic blanket spread in a sunny spot. Six places had been carefully set, with plates, cheese knives and plastic wine flutes – but that wasn't it either.

An angel and a demon sat at two of the places. Their flutes were already half full, despite the hour. But then, they were expected.

It was the hand of the angel. And the way it rested, casual, but secure. On the hand of the demon.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Greatest Showman song called 'Tightrope' mainly because its been in my head for days, but also because of the line: 
> 
> "But I'd follow you to the great unknown / Off to a world we call our own"
> 
> Does that remind anyone else of Alpha Centuri? :) And finally - because it makes sense that he might feel this way, in this story where Crowley is always the one intiating their contact:
> 
> "Never sure, will you catch me if I should fall?"


End file.
